MODE Book Review, Harrisburg: Renaissance of a Capital City

MODE Book Review

Harrisburg: Renaissance of a Capital City

by John Hope

You have no idea how much it pains me — as a writer — to admit this: Sometimes, pictures are indeed worth a thousand words. For as long as I can remember of my soon-to-be 59 years, I have loved the printed word for its ability to take me to faraway places and plant images in my mind. And often those images are more powerful because I have created them for myself.

Book Cover But there are times when photographs, paintings, and other visual media really are necessary if we are to truly experience something, whether it is a sunset, a flight of birds on a gray winter afternoon, or the unbelievable changes that have occurred in a city.

Yes, it may be possible for a writer with enough talent to paint word pictures that allow the reader to experience the depth and breadth of what is being described. I think Buzz Bissinger did a great job in his recent A Prayer for the City in painting a picture of urban America today and the efforts of Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell to save his city. But even that book was helped by Robert Clark’s photos.

So I am convinced that any book about the renaissance of the last two decades in Harrisburg needs to tell its story with pictures, supported by the written word, and that’s just what Blair Seitz has done with his latest masterpiece.

In the interest of full disclosure and truthful journalism, let me say up front that I am very pleased to be one of the writers Seitz asked to participate in this project. I contributed two of the essays and edited the others. While I like to think the finished product is better as a result of my involvement, I’m convinced I’d be writing this review just as enthusiastically if I had not participated.

Blair Seitz is an artist with a camera who has taken on Pennsylvania as his special challenge in the last few years, producing a number of books that readily convey the natural beauty, history, and life of our state. He now has turned his eye on the home he shares with us and shows us a Harrisburg we might not recognize at first. A friend who moved here from outside Washington, D.C., several years ago and likes this area very much, still looked at Renaissance and said, “Wow, it’s a real city, isn’t it.” Indeed it is. And it’s a real city that has been through a lot in the past 20 years in an effort to reclaim its glory days.
To help people understand what Harrisburg had become and what it is today, Seitz assembled 10 diverse people, many of whom did not know each other because they move in different circles, to write about their city and their life in it. It may be that the only common thread for all 10 of us is that we are fervent in our love for Harrisburg and desperately want it to succeed.

Fittingly, the book’s Foreword was written by the man we all look to for his leadership and vision in engineering Harrisburg’s renaissance, Mayor Stephen R. Reed. We know the mayor has his detractors, and there have been times when many of us who contributed to the book have disagreed with something he has considered or done, but I think all of us and almost everyone in Harrisburg and central Pennsylvania recognize that we wouldn’t be talking about the city’s renaissance without Reed, and we wonder what will happen when the inevitable day comes that he no longer is mayor. The student who used to bombard the Capitol press room with news releases for the Young Democrats when I worked there as a reporter has matured into an incredibly effective leader and one of the few politicians I’ve covered who doesn’t make it look like it’s all about his personal need for greater power and more political victories.

Reed’s Foreword paints a picture of the accumulated problems the city faced 20 years ago and then describes some of the bold initiatives that brought us to where we are today. Be truthful now, is there anyone other than Reed who, early-on, would have said that we’d have a family recreation destination on City Island, the Harrisburg Senators, a Hilton Hotel, a magnificent train station, or a Whitaker Center? I didn’t think so. That, my friends, is called vision and it’s what’s brought us to the point that we can have this book.

Janice Black’s introduction clearly points out that no one person — including Stephen Reed — could have accomplished all this alone. There has been a lot of support from businesses, community organizations, and individuals for the Harrisburg renaissance.

Spurred on by a poetic hymn of praise to Harrisburg composed by Nathaniel Gadsden for Mayor Reed’s 1998 inauguration and Gadsden’s loving memories of his life in Harrisburg, the books’ essays address a number of aspects that make up the fabric of life in our city, all beautifully illustrated by Seitz’s stunning photographs and a photo essay by Gary Dwight Miller.

Those of us who rush along the city’s streets too busy to look at our surroundings have missed some outstanding architecture, as David Morrison reminds us in his essay on Harrisburg’s historic places. When we take time to look at many of the houses and office buildings, as Blair Seitz did, we can see what Morrison means when he says that Harrisburg today is enjoying the best of its accumulated heritage. “We’ve endured and thrived as a national crossroad of river, rail, and highway transportation. We’ve evolved as a city of inviting architecture and unusually commodious public places … At the turn of the third millennium, Harrisburg is, as much as ever, a ‘City Beautiful.’ We’ve worked hard to make it so and keep it so.”

Equally important as architecture to Harrisburg is its outdoor treasures, its parks and gardens and greennbelt. Norman LaCrosse describes the turn-of-the-century City Beautiful movement and the current effort to complete the Harrisburg Greenbelt that those forward-thinking people started so that the Capital City would be forever surrounded by Penn’s Woods. It’s hard to imagine Harrisburg without Riverfront Park and Reservoir Park and Italian Lake. But there was a time when they didn’t exist and it’s important to remember that time and to be sure that support for our parks continues. City Parks and Recreation director Tina Manoogian-King takes understandable pride in the areas under her charge and in the many programs offered to the region at the various parks. Reading her essay we become aware of just how much there is to do here every year, and what a draw it is for people from all over central Pennsylvania.

While there might be those who think that the words “Harrisburg,” “culture,” and “art” should not be put together in the same sentence, Art Association president Carrie Wissler-Thomas quickly proves how wrong they are with an energetic and spirited tour of the visual arts scene that she found when she moved to Harrisburg and its evolution over the years. And now we have Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts, a facility that many of us thought could never become a reality. Home to great musical, dramatic, and other performances, as well as a science museum and IMAX movie theatre, Whitaker Center is destined to play a major role in the continuing renaissance of Harrisburg and I enjoyed being able to tell its story alongside Seitz’s photographic tribute.

As vital as architecture, art, greenspace, culture, and history are, it’s really people who make a city what it is and psychoanalyst David Schwartz has done a great job of conveying what it means to live in community in one of Harrisburg’s neighborhoods, a place where people know when and how to keep their distance but also when and how to reach out to each other.

Harrisburg doesn’t exist in a vacuum, is not an island unto itself, but I was still a bit surprised when Seitz first asked me to write an essay on some of the places around the city, fearing it would detract from the story he was telling. But he was right. We all relate to Lancaster, Gettysburg, Hershey, and the many other communities and attractions that surround us, and it’s important to recognize the mutually supportive relationship we have with other areas.

Clearly, one of the keys to what makes a state capital special is the presence of state government. Ruth Hoover Seitz, Blair’s wife, who already had teamed up with him for the book Pennsylvania’s Capitol, takes us on a tour of that gorgeous statehouse on Capitol Hill that is the envy of so many other states. Ruth tells us she likes to come back to the Capitol from time to time “to experience its grandeur. What I enjoy most is the symbolic art — images and script — presented to tell Pennsylvania’s history and to proclaim its ideals.” She relates the memories and images evoked in her by the paintings, statues, and other artifacts she finds as she walks those historic halls, and makes us all the richer for it.

Certainly there is much more that could be said and shown about Harrisburg, including some of the things that still need to be addressed if we are to continue into the 21st century as a viable place to live. But the time and place to raise those issues is elsewhere. Harrisburg: Renaissance of a Capital City is a hymn of praise to what is and to what can be if only we will work together for it. It tells a wonderful story and gives us hope for the future. And for that, we should all be grateful to Blair Seitz and those who supported this work and made it possible.

John Hope is a writer and editor who has happily called Harrisburg home since 1970.